Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.

It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.

fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.

I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.

The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.